David Nelson's death and the baby boom generation's First Family

                David Nelson died last week at home in Los Angeles, from complications of colon cancer. He was 74--and the last surviving member of the television family that defined the baby boom generation--or at least the 1950s TV version of it.

            The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet starred the real-life family of bandleader Ozzie Nelson, his lead singer Harriet, and their two sons David and younger brother Ricky. The Ozzie Nelson Band had been successful in the 1930s and '40s (it had a No. 1 hit in 1935 with "And Then Some"), and were regulars on Red Skelton's radio show.

            Looking to spend more time with his family, Ozzie created his own radio show, launching The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet in 1944 and moving it to TV in 1952, where it continued through 1966. It paved the way for other classic family sitcoms like Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best, and as The New York Times' obit for David suggested, made the Nelsons TV's first reality stars.

            But The Times also noted that David was the least of the four, "dully mature as a son, quietly sage as an older brother."

            "He was a lot less interesting, sort of a super-square, stolid older brother," says music business veteran Gregg Geller. "I didn't have one, but my best friend in those days did and he actually reminded me of David Nelson--a real straight arrow and not a whole lot of fun. Not to say there was anything wrong with David: He just wasn't as interesting as Ricky on the show."

                It was mainly because of Ricky that Geller, who later signed him to Epic Records, was a big fan of The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet.

                "You got to see him sing his hits on the show," says Geller. "I watched it before he started singing and liked it, but when he started making records and plugging them on the show, I bought most every one of them--on 45 r.p.m. [singles]."

                Geller notes that Ricky recorded for the Imperial label, same as Fats Domino--whose hit "I'm Walkin'" was a 1957 cover hit for Ricky. But Ricky had long since changed his name to Rick by the time Geller met him in New York in the early 1970s.

            "The Rick Sings Nelson album had just come out and I was writing for [now defunct record business trade magazine] Record World," Geller recalls. "The local label promotion man brought him around, and it was well-known that I was a huge fan so we all went out to lunch. But when he got to our office he was carrying a can of Coke--which was a sponsor of the show. So I told him about this Ozzie And Harriet shtick we used to do in college, where we'd say, 'Let's have some nice warm Coca-Cola' as if Ozzie was saying it--though it was really always ice-cold! I had to explain to him why we thought it was so hilarious!"

            Rick "didn't necessarily agree that it was so hilarious," adds Geller, "but he appreciated the story." But more significantly, he and Geller discussed their mutual admiration for Carl Perkins. They would expand upon Perkins and other interests when Geller moved to Los Angeles as an a&r rep for Epic--to which he eventually signed Rick.

            "We talked about  the record he might make, and to my lasting regret I signed him and then left the label--so I never got to work with him," says Geller. "I still feel kind of guilty that he was left in the lurch and his time at Epic didn't turn out so well."

                Geller returned to New York and an a&r stint at Columbia; he then worked at RCA, where he oversaw the reissue of the Elvis Presley catalog around the time that he last saw Rick--at a party in L.A. celebrating the 45th anniversary of Presley's manager Colonel Tom Parker's involvement with the label.

                "It was a couple years before he died, and he still looked great," says Geller, now a noted compilation and reissue producer (he produced a compilation of legendary rockabilly brother-sister act the Collins Kids, whose sister half, Lorrie Collins, was Ricky's first girlfriend and appeared on the show). "But he always looked great. He was several years older than me--but always looked much younger."

                A Rock and Roll Hall of Famer thanks to early hits like "Poor Little Fool" and "Travelin' Man" (both chart-toppers), Rick Nelson was only 45 when he died in a plane crash in 1985. His last brush with the Top 10 had come in 1972 when he reached No. 6 with "Garden Party," a tuneful but sour take on his 1971 appearance at Madison Square Garden, when he was booed for not only diverging from his early hits to include recent material (including a country version of the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women") but came out with long hair and hippie-style clothes.

                "If memories were all I sang I'd rather drive a truck," he concluded in the song, and Geller points out that in the Times' obit, David indicated that the happy Nelson family that made a generation of baby boomers so envious was at least as much fiction as fact.

                "We would keep up the front of this totally problemless, happy-go-lucky group," David told Esquire in 1971. "There might have been a tremendous battle in our home, but if someone from outside came in, it would be as if the director yelled, ‘Roll ’em.’ We’d fall right into our stage roles. You’d get to wondering which was the true thing. It’s an awfully big load to carry, to be everyone’s fantasy family."

            Rick illustrated what Geller calls the "absurdity/reality friction that existed in the show" when he hosted Saturday Night Live in 1979, spoofing The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet in a nightmarish skit where he kept entering homes from other sitcoms of the time--Leave It To Beaver, Father Knows Best, Make Room For Daddy, I Love Lucy--searching in vain for his own.

                It was, says Geller, "possibly the best thing Saturday Night Live ever did."

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